Page 20: Angelicum Academy

The Angelicum Academy

By: Patrick S.J. Carmack and Steve Bertucci

Wisdom begins in Wonder. ~ Aristotle

The Angelicum Homeschool Program is a nursery-though-12th-grade curriculum for home education that supports parents seeking to foster the habits of thought and action in their children that will lead them to true happiness. Rooted in a philosophy of education that recognizes wonder as the beginning and end of learning, this program helps students of all ages to engage in conversation with the great authors of the past through the study of classic texts, and sound instruction in grammar, phonics, reading, spelling, vocabulary, listening, speaking, writing, and, for the mathematical works: arithmetic, geometry, and so on.

The Angelicum Homeschool Program is complete – including all subjects, books, guides and tests needed, for all grades. The nursery through 8th grade curriculum is conventionally organized, with a superb classics literature base (such as Aesop's Fables, Mother Goose, the Little House books, Little Women, Robinson Crusoe, Tom Sawyer, David Copperfield, etc.), but is far more challenging than the public school curricula, and exceeds the academic standards of many private and parochial schools as well. Being oriented to home education, it allows the parents to set the pace. The literature component was carefully selected for integration with the entire curriculum, good moral example, including in the supplemental lives of the saints offered, and to prepare students, in graduated steps, to read the world’s finest and most influential literature in several fields collected in our Great Books program.

The 9th-12th grade integrated-literature program was designed primarily by the late Dr. Mortimer Adler (with minor changes) who called these works the Great Books. Having learned the arts of learning (i.e., the liberal arts: grammar, reading, writing, calculating, etc.) in the elementary levels, students here begin to study the substance of a liberal education – the works of the great authors of Western civilization – masterpieces by Homer, Plato, Aristotle, St. John, St. Augustine, Ven. Bede, St. Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare and many others, in literature, poetry, drama, history, science and philosophy. These works constitute an on-going dialogue about the truths of man's nature and his relationship with the rest of reality, called the Great Conversation. In giving your children the opportunity to grasp this wisdom from the past, they cannot help but be led to a greater appreciation and understanding of virtue and the wonder and beauty of life, and the ability to participate in the intellectual life of the Church and culture.

The American Council on Education recently recommended 48 hours (six hours per semester) of college credit for students completing the 9th-12th grade Great Books course.